36 minutes ago, irreligious said:
. . . I have no patience with fiction. Not since I was a teenager when I read George Eliot, Henry James and E. M Forster. I just can’t read fiction anymore. My own life is so empty, I can’t be bothered experiencing a second hand fictional life.
My own life is so full and pressed for time. I got to read little fiction in my life because my reading and study time was consumed with non-fiction for some knowledge I needed for my projects. I would love to read more great fiction people have recommended to me. I can only see ever doing that if I came to a point in which I could no longer create philosophy, even though I could still read and basically comprehend. Then I’ll read that delicious fiction I’ve not experienced.
I write some poetry, and there are some samples here. A collection of 29 of my poems will soon be available in an e-book and an audio book. Even among people who like some modern poetry, mine is only right for some. Recently, a reader (and listener) told me when she is blue, my poems lift her up.
I’ve been a bit surprised at how successful Rand was at getting her philosophy attention through writing fiction. She was not a professionally trained philosopher and could not have written papers that have the form suitable for academic journals of philosophy. But she made friends with some gifted young people who were on track to complete Ph.D.'s in Philosophy and who could draw up her philosophy in accessible non-fiction at an intermediate level or at professional level. The former is the book people here keep recommending to you: Peikoff’s Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand.* The latter is (i) the series of books published by the Ayn Rand Society, which is a group affiliated with the American Philosophical Association and (ii) the book I mentioned to you already: Blackwell’s Companion to Ayn Rand.
Which of Forster’s books did you get to read? I read Howard’s End.
“Only connect” –E.M. Forster